Ingrid Michaelson says she can be a cynic. She’s been hurt and disappointed. She waits for the other shoe to drop, rolls her eyes at things she finds cheesy. Yet she is the mastermind behind the music and lyrics of Broadway’s The Notebook, based on one of the most iconic romantic films and books of this century.
“Cynicism is just a protective mechanism,” Michaelson says. And so, the singer-songwriter, known for her Billboard-charting “The Way I Am” and “Girls Chase Boys,” turns to her music. It’s where she can be a romantic and dive into her innermost feelings.
“My songwriting is kind of like my inner cheerleader. That’s where my positivity comes from,” she says. “And thank God. … I just think love is the reason why we’re all here — romantic love and familial love and friendship love. That’s what humans are meant to do. I think that’s when we shine our brightest, when we’re emanating some form of love.
“And [The Notebook] is just pure heart.”
When Michaelson first heard of the project, she began writing music for it without even being asked, she was so inspired by the story.
She’d been itching to get back into musical theater somehow. That’s what she’d gone to school for, but as she thrived as a singer-songwriter, her musical theater side fell to the wayside. Yet this familiar story of Allie and Noah finding love despite their challenges sparked something in Michaelson.
“Even though these characters are going through different things — the specifics are different — in terms of the range of human emotions, we’re all experiencing the same thing, at the end of the day,” she says. “Even though I’m writing for characters and writing for story, I’m also writing about the human condition, which is something I’ve always done, so it was a natural progression [from writing personal music to writing for a show].”
For Michaelson, that also meant channeling her own grief from losing both her parents. “You don’t feel these memories — and beautiful memories — with my family [in the show], and so it really is like a secret love letter to my mother and my father.”
Instead, Michaelson says, the emotions of those memories linger in a different story, a different set of memories. “I like to say that [the musical] has all the emotions. One song in the show is actually called ‘Sadness and Joy,’ and that really encompasses what life is. We sort of toggle back and forth between these two very deep emotions in our lives. One is sort of always jockeying for position, and I think The Notebook story does such a beautiful job of lacing through those two emotions.”
“Everybody who can see it has an in,” Michaelson adds. As in the film, the musical sees the lead characters through three time periods: in their teens, their late 20s, and when they’re elderly. In the musical, though, three sets of actors play the characters in their respective ages. “Which is really beautiful and magical for theater,” Michaelson says, “because you get to see three different generations on stage at the same time. One’s watching a memory of themselves, and it lends itself to really amazing harmony options for me, but I got so excited about it because with three different ages represented, there is this entry point for wherever you are in your life — either you have experienced something, or you’re going through something, or there’s an expectation of love or of loss.”
Altogether, Michaelson says, “Our show is sort of an exercise in, ‘Let’s feel some things.’ It’s really beautiful to be in a room of 2,500 people, and everyone’s just having this very visceral, similar human experience. It’s like a religious experience when you walk out and you really feel like you’ve been moved.
“And it rains on stage, which is really one of my favorite parts, when there’s rain, because how cool is that?”
Performances of The Notebook at the Orpheum Theatre are Thursday, October 30th, through Saturday, November 1st, at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday, November, 1st, 2 p.m.; Sunday, November 2nd, 1 p.m.; and Sunday, November 2nd, 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $42.70 to $163.25 and can be purchased at orpheum-memphis.com.
